Book Reviews

Book Blurb

In the hottest summer on record, Iron Lake reservoir is emptying, revealing secrets that were intended to stay hidden beneath the water. The tragic story of a missing man is a media sensation, and abruptly the writer and the cop falling in love is just a postscript to horrors neither could have imagined.

 

Best Selling Horror writer Chris Lassiter struggles for inspiration and he’s close to never writing again. His life has become an endless loop of nothing but empty pages, personal appearances, and a marketing machine that is systematically destroying his muse. In a desperate attempt to force Chris to complete unfinished manuscripts his agent buys a remote cabin. All Chris has to do is hide away and write, but he’s lost his muse, and not even he can make stories appear from thin air.

 

Sawyer Wiseman left town for Chicago, chasing the excitement and potential of being a big city cop, rising the ranks, and making his mark. A case gone horribly wrong draws him back to Lancaster Falls. Working for the tiny police department in the town he’d been running from, digging into cold cases and police corruption, he spends his day's healing, and his nights hoping the nightmares of his last case leave him alone.

 

Book Review

Small towns have a charm all their own, and while this story is full of the wonderful side of Lancaster Falls, Pennsylvania, its quirky inhabitants, and their shared history, it also exposes the drawbacks of everyone being in everyone else’s business. The setup is pretty clear. First, you have “the hottest summer on record” - something I can certainly relate to with climate change causing every summer to be hotter than the one before. Second, there is a stranger in town who lives in a remote cabin and nobody quite knows what to make of him. Third, there are several secrets, some of them very dark and tragic, that get suddenly revealed and cause upheaval all over town. And finally, there is a cop in the tiny police department who not only has recently returned from a stint in Chicago, but also has an insatiable curiosity and a drive to solve every single case he can get his hands on – including police corruption. With ingredients like this added to RJ Scott’s ability to weave an emotional tale, “What Lies Beneath” turned out to be one of the most suspenseful yet entertaining mysteries I have read in a while.

Sawyer wants to make sense of his life again after a case in Chicago went horribly wrong, causing nightmares that just won’t stop. So Sawyer comes back home to the town he ran away from years ago, hoping that Lancaster Falls will help him refocus – only to discover that his need to still make a difference is not an attitude his boss supports. Then there is the case of a skull and bones found in the receding reservoir’s layers of mud, and that is really only the starting point to discovering a whole range of things Sawyer is sure he’d rather not have known. But, true to his oath to find the truth and to protect the innocent, he keeps going even when he’d rather lead a quieter life.

Chris is a successful author of horror novels with a very persistent case of writer’s block. It has been two years since his last novel, and his agent is on his case about finishing the third book in the series. So is Hollywood, since they want to make the next movie, but Chris’s muse seems to be on permanent leave. Chris’s attempts to find a plot, to develop characters, and to use the creepiness of various town legends to summon his fear to inspire a long-overdue novel all show his desperation. His constant references to horrific explanations had me looking over my shoulder more than once…

Both Sawyer and Chris are searching for what happened to put human remains at the bottom of the reservoir – Sawyer focused on facts and Chris using his imagination to come up with all kinds of gruesome explanations that he might be able to use for his novel. They don’t start out as friends, but the attraction between them is there from the start. As they get to know each other, they begin to build trust, but it is slow going! I enjoyed watching them deal with the obstacles between them – always trusting that they’d be able to figure it all out.

If you like your romances with a side of horror and suspense, if you think strangers can learn to cooperate and even fall in love despite significant differences in temperament, and if you’re looking for an exciting read full of secrets and revelations, political maneuvering and corruption, and a whole range of charming (and less charming!) small-town characters, then you will probably like this novel as much as I do. I can’t wait for the next volume! The ending is tantalizing and promises a deeper look at what the heck has been going on in Lancaster Falls.

 

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by Signal Boost for the purpose of a review.

Additional Information

Format	ebook and print
Length	Novel, 246 pages/67000 words
Heat Level
Publication Date	16-July-2019
Price	$3.99 ebook, $11.99 paperback
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/What-Lies-Beneath-Lancaster-Falls-ebook/dp/B07VGMFHHD